Education Week - February 26, 2020 - 12

Trump Budget Would Slash,
Recast Ed. Funding Stream
By Andrew Ujifusa
Congress has essentially ignored
President Donald Trump's previous
education spending blueprints and
approved relatively small overall increases for the U.S. Department of
Education in each of the past three
federal appropriations bills. There's
no particular reason to think Capitol
Hill will treat his latest budget proposal much differently.
But the president's plan to shrink
U.S. Department of Education funding by nearly 8 percent in part by consolidating 29 major programs-including Title I aid for disadvantaged
students and funding for charter
school expansion-into a single,
$19.4 billion block grant is still managing to kick up plenty of dust.
U. S . Secreta r y of Educat ion
Betsy DeVos and other Education
Department officials say the grant
would provide states with new-

found flexibility. "Different states
will spend their share of the block
grant differently, and that's OK,"
DeVos said during a presentation
of the spending proposal earlier
this month. "In fact, that's what we
hope they will do."
In a presentation on the budget, the
department highlighted that states
could support charter schools with
their block grants.
Others, however, focused on the
overall funding cut and the end to
several line-item programs in the proposal, which would reduce the Education Department's budget by $5.6 billion, lowering it to $66.6 billion.
Daniel Domenech, the executive
director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said in a
statement that, "Once again, unsurprisingly, the president has released
a budget proposal that is bad for students, bad for schools, and bad for
public education."

And charter advocates, who in past
years saw the Trump administration
try to increase money for charter
school expansion, panned the proposal to fold that program into a new
block grant.
"Secretary DeVos wants to be
known as the secretary who has
promoted school choice," said Nina
Rees, the president and CEO of the
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. "So in light of that, it
is ironic that they would lump this
program into a large block grant
with all these other set-asides and
programs that they normally don't
support."
Trump's new Elementary and Secondary Education for the Disadvantaged block grant would represent a
$4.7 billion cut from the combined
current funding levels for the 29 programs that would be merged, including the $440 million Charter School
Program grants.

Targeted for Consolidation
The 29 programs the Trump administration wants to meld into a single block grant include some of
ɈǘƵǶƊȲǐƵȺɈǏƵƮƵȲƊǶjׁׂٌȯȲȌǐȲƊǿȺƊȺɩƵǶǶƊȺȯȲȌǐȲƊǿȺǏȌƧɐȺǞȁǐȌȁȺȯƵƧǞ˛ƧȯȌȯɐǶƊɈǞȌȁȺȌǏȺɈɐƮƵȁɈȺ‫خ‬
(in millions of dollars)

2020 Enacted

2021 Request

21st Century Learning Centers
Alaska Native Education
American History and Civics Education

2021 Change from 2020

$1,250

$-1,250

-36

-5

-30

440

-440

-52

Comprehensive Literacy Development Grants

192

-192

Education Innovation and Research

190

-190

English-Language Acquisition

787

-787

-25

Arts in Education
Charter Schools
Comprehensive Centers

Full-Service Community Schools
High School Equivalency Program

-23

102

-102

Innovative Approaches to Literacy

-27

Javits Gifted and Talented

-13

Homeless Education

Magnet Schools

107

-107

Migrant Education

375

-375

Neglected and Delinquent

-48

Native Hawaiian Education

-37

Promise Neighborhoods

-80

Ready-to-Learn Television

-29

Rural Education

186

-186

School Safety National Activities

105

-105

Statewide Family Engagement Center

-10

1,210

-1,210

Supporting Effective Educator Development

-80

Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants

2,132

-2,132

Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants

Teacher Quality Partnerships
Teacher and School Leader Incentive Grants
Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies
Elementary and Secondary Education for the Disadvantaged Block Grant

-50

200

-200

16,310

-16,310

19,354

SOURCE:Ǐ˛ƧƵȌǏwƊȁƊǐƵǿƵȁɈƊȁƮ ɐƮǐƵɈ

12 | EDUCATION WEEK | February 26, 2020 | www.edweek.org

Democratic candidates for
president Sens. Bernie Sanders of
Vermont and Elizabeth Warren
of Massachusetts have proposed
halting the $440 million grants
for charter expansion altogether.
Education Department spokeswoman, Angela Morabito, said
drawing parallels between that
proposal and how Trump's budget would handle charter school
expansion grants was "ludicrous."
"This administration is the
most choice-friendly, pro-education-freedom administration in
history," she said in a statement.
Other programs whose funding would be merged into this
new block grant include Title II
grants for educator preparation
(which currently gets $2.1 billion
in federal funding); 21st Century
Learning Centers, which back
after-school programs ($1.3 billion); and Title IV block grants for
academic enrichment and student
well-being ($1.2 billion).

Dodging Cuts
Not every area of the department's budget would get a trim,
however. Trump's fiscal 2021
spending blueprint would provide
$2 billion to career and technical education, an approximately
$700 million increase. The president signed a reauthorization of
the federal law for CTE in 2018.
The proposal also includes the
administration's year-old plan to
create a $5 billion program to fund
vouchers and other services called
Education Freedom Scholarships.
The tax credits for the scholarships would be administered by
the U.S. Department of Treasury.
Trump's budget proposal marks
the fourth straight time the
president has sought to cut the
Education Department's total
budget. Last year, he proposed
chopping 10 percent off the agency's roughly $71 billion budget.
However, the spending bill
Trump signed at the end of 2019
increased the department's budget by $1.3 billion, up to $72.8 billion. None of the 29 programs he
sought to eliminate funding last
year was axed. And Title II and
Title IV grants got increases, as
did aid for disadvantaged students under Title I and special
education funding for states.
Funding for Head Start under
the Department of Health and
Human Services would decline by
$58 million, to $10.6 billion.
Meanwhile, the proposed budget
for the U.S. Department of Agriculture would impose new restrictions on the Community Eligibility Program, which lets schools or
districts with high enrollments of
students who qualify for free and
reduced-price meals serve free
meals to all students, without individually enrolling them in the
National School Lunch Program.
Specifically, the budget would
close a loophole under which some
districts qualified all their schools
or groups of schools by combining
their enrollment and meal data.

Pushback
Over SEL
Bubbles Up
In Idaho
By Evie Blad
When Idaho state education leaders
pitched a social-emotional learning
proposal to lawmakers recently, one
member of the state's House Education Committee compared the plan to
the dystopian behavior control in the
futuristic novel "Brave New World."
Others said it's parents' job-not
schools'-to help children develop
self-control and relationship skills.
Some at the Feb. 11 meeting were
skeptical, noting that social-emotional learning is part of a national
movement being embraced in
schools across the country, which
they considered problematic.
And, as Idaho Ed News first reported, some walked out of the hearing altogether.
Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra told Education Week that she was puzzled by the
response, especially since the budget presentation focused largely on
helping teachers work with students
who've been exposed to trauma.
"We want to make sure we are connecting parents and students and
teachers with the right tools and the
right resources to get them the help
that they need," Ybarra said. "I don't
think there is any other way to talk
about this. It is not a blue issue. It is
not a red issue."
The reception Idaho leaders faced
is a slice of pushback that occasionally bubbles up around the country
as interest grows in social-emotional
learning efforts.

'New Age Nanny State'
Ybarra, an elected Republican, said
she's learned since the meeting that
some lawmakers had circulated materials from the Massachusetts-based
Pioneer Institute, which is known for
its opposition to the Common Core
State Standards. That organization
refers to SEL as part of a "New Age
nanny state."
At the hearing Tuesday, Idaho Rep.
Tony Wisniewski, a Republican,
asked his fellow committee members
to remember their own childhood experiences.
"Think about the school environment that we had," Wisniewski, says
in a recording of the hearing, "and
the respect that we had for teachers
and other students. And the discipline that was enforced not only by
the teachers but by our parents, who,
if they found out we were misbehaving in school, would undoubtedly
support the teachers and take us to
the woodshed if necessary. ... Now
we jump forward to the 2020s. To me
... it appears we are trying to get the
collective behavioral approach that
was depicted in 'Brave New World.' "

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Education Week - February 26, 2020

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